Memorandum from esure (RS 58)
Firstly, I would like to provide some background
information on esure. We were founded in 2001 as a joint venture
between Peter Wood, the entrepreneur who launched Direct Line
in the 1980s, and HBOS. esure became the fastest growing insurer
ever in 2005 when it gained over 1 million customers just four
years after starting trading. The company went on to launch the
revolutionary brand Sheilas' Wheels, marketed primarily at female
drivers, in 2005 which has taken on over a quarter of a million
customers in just two years.
esure is particularly concerned about the problem
of high accident rates among young drivers. From an insurance
perspective, unless statistics improve, esure believes that the
average 17 year old driver is going to find it hard to find affordable
insurance before long. Currently, premiums are very high for young
drivers reflecting their disproportionate likelihood both of claiming
and of making more expensive claims—often involving injury
to passengers. This in turn means that increasingly only the largest
insurers are able to underwrite young drivers and even those that
do may have to increase premiums even more in order to properly
reflect increasing risk. Consequently, esure believes that policies
are required to reduce this risk if insurance is to remain affordable
for young drivers.
We have been actively involved in supporting
road safety education seminars in Surrey for the past four years.
The Safe Drive Stay Alive seminars are attended by all "A"
level students in the area with the aim of educating them forcefully
about the dangers of irresponsible driving before they even take
to the roads. The seminars screen a filmed recreation of a real
life road traffic accident where a local young person was killed
and the audience is subsequently addressed by each of the emergency
services who attended the scene of that particular accident as
well as other victims of irresponsible and dangerous driving.
esure has also been monitoring the Government's
Motoring Offences and Breath Test statistics for a similar length
of time and, while the Committee praises the "considerable
progress" made in reducing the scale of deaths and injuries
on the roads of Great Britain since 2000, our analysis of those
statistics has shown that there has been absolutely no progress
in tackling the disproportionate amount of serious motoring convictions
involving young male drivers.
The last Motoring Offences and Breath Test statistics
to be published (2005) found that male drivers aged between 17
and 20 years old make up 32.2% of all convictions for dangerous
driving offences despite only representing around 3% of the UK
driving population. The equivalent figure for women of the same
age is just 0.5%. esure believes that tackling this high risk
group should be a priority for road safety policy in the future
and that the Government should place as much emphasis on the causes
of poor driver behaviour as is currently being given to tackling
a perceived lack of driving skills among this group.
Attached as appendix 1[92]
is an advance copy of an esure commissioned report called "Sex
Differences in Driving and Insurance Risk" written by
Professor Geoffrey Beattie of the University of Manchester. It
will be published in the next couple of weeks.
The report concludes that the prevalence of
young male drivers in motoring conviction statistics is not because
men are less skilled drivers than women, but is instead due to
inherent behavioural and hormonal factors, which require further
detailed study and a recognition of which must form part of the
Government's future road safety policies. The conclusion of the
report heavily influences our response, which has been restricted
to questions 6 and 7 only. esure does not feel appropriately qualified
to answer the other part of the inquiry.
We very much hope that this submission is of
interest to the committee and would be pleased to provide oral
evidence to your inquiry should you wish.
What further policies, not already widely used,
might be considered for adoption and what evidence there is for
their success?
1. We believe that the Government should
target future road safety policy at the attitudes and behaviours
of young male drivers specifically in order to produce the biggest
and fastest impact on reducing accidents on British roads.
2. esure also feels that tackling a perceived
lack of driving skill can only ever be part of the solution to
reducing bad driving. We believe that the attitudes and behaviours
of young male drivers toward road safety are just as important
causal factors of poor driving as any lack of driving ability.
3. It is our opinion that, by concentrating
only on reform of the current driving test and ignoring driver
behaviour, the proposed DSA consultation on driver training and
testing will fail to produce a comprehensive solution to the problem.
4. We have long held the view that road
safety education needs to start before people get behind the wheel
of a car. We have therefore recently written to the Road Safety
Minister Jim Fitzpatrick MP to encourage the Department for Transport
to undertake a thorough review of the way young men view road
safety in order to develop government educational programmes aimed
specifically at changing the attitudes of young men toward driving
before they actually start learning to drive.
What should be the priorities for government in
considering further targets for casualty reduction beyond 2010?
5. The Government should prioritise road
safety policies which specifically tackle the inherent behavioural
and hormonal factors which contribute directly to the dangerous
risk taking and thrill seeking driving behaviours of young male
drivers if there is to be any significant reduction in deaths
and injuries on the UK's roads in the future.
6. esure's analysis of the Government's
annual Motoring Offences and Breath Test statistics demonstrate
that the vast majority of people convicted of the most serious
driving offences are men and that there has been no progress made
in reducing this figure since 2000 (see table below).
| Offence Type |
Percentage Male
|
| 2000 | 2001
| 2002 | 2002 |
2004 | 2005 |
| Causing death or bodily harm | 95
| 94 | 94 | 94 |
94 | 94 |
| Dangerous Driving | 97 | 97
| 97 | 96 | 97 |
97 |
| Driving etc after consuming alcohol or taking drugs
| 90 | 90 | 89 |
89 | 89 | 88 |
| Accident offences | 88 | 88
| 88 | 87 | 87 |
87 |
| Unauthorised taking or theft of a motor vehicle
| 96 | 96 | 96 |
95 | 96 | 95 |
| Speed limit offences | 85 |
84 | 83 | 82 | 82
| 82 |
| | | |
| | | |
7. Within that group it is young men in particular (aged
21 and under) who are hugely disproportionately responsible for
the most serious offences and, similarly, there has been no progress
made in tackling this problem.
| Offence Type | Percentage Male under 21
|
| 2000 | 2001
| 2002 | 2003 |
2004 | 2005 |
| Causing death or bodily harm | 24
| 25 | 24 | 24 |
25 | 26 |
| Dangerous driving | 34 | 38
| 35 | 33 | 33 |
33 |
| Driving etc after consuming alcohol or taking drugs
| 12 | 12 | 12 |
12 | 11 | 11 |
| Accident offences | 21 | 21
| 22 | 22 | 20 |
19 |
| Unauthorised taking or theft of motor vehicle
| 67 | 68 | 64 |
63 | 63 | 62 |
| Speed limit offences | 5 |
4 | 4 | 3 | 3
| 3 |
| | | |
| | | |
8. 94% of convictions for causing death or bodily harm
on UK roads are by men and approximately one quarter of those
are men under 21 years of age. A staggering 97% of convictions
for dangerous driving are men and of those over one-third are
men under the age of 21.
9. For the most recent year in which statistics are available
(2005), male drivers aged between 17 and 20 years old make up
32.2% of all convictions for dangerous driving offences despite
only representing around 3% of the UK driving population. The
equivalent figure for women of the same age is just 0.5%.
10. It is clear that in order to make the biggest and
fastest impact on improving road safety in the UK the Government
must prioritise men and young men in particular when deciding
on future road safety policies.
11. Therefore specific policies need to be developed
for specific groups and those policies must be based on an understanding
of the differences between male and female driving behaviours
and the particular driving attitudes of young male drivers.
12. The "Sex differences in driving" report
(appendix 1) provides evidence from studies around the world which
show that differences between male and female drivers in terms
of crash rates derive from fundamental differences in specific
areas of behaviour and psychological functioning.
February 2008
92
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